Oddly enough I would rather not have someone patronizingly voting for what they believe is in my best interests. How do they know what that might be? I would hope that people would always vote in their own 'selfish' self-interest.

I might vote for something that's not directly in my self-interest, believing it's more in the collective interest. I'm part of the collective and I feel a more even society is in my interests, even if that means I personally might not be as well off as I could be. That's really not patronizing.

Though you could argue that I've done it for my own self-interests in the long term (who knows when you or your kids might rely on essential services) :)

EDIT Also, it's pretty obvious that there are choices that are better for some groups of people (that aren't me). I don't know who "you" are, but there are voting choices that I can make that will help those classes of people, you may or may not be among them. I resent the idea that I'm being patronizing by making that choice (though in the strictest sense of the word "patron" maybe you're right).

'Collective' suggests to me we're not going to agree. Patronizing in this context only means making assumptions (likely to be unwarranted I’d argue) about what someone else wants. But who is the 'someone' affected by a vote in a general election? How many people? To what extent? What about unknown/known effects on other people who you do not have in mind? You cannot know and the assumptions pile up. So much easier to vote on what you really do know to the extent that you can know or rationalize. As you say, we can surely agree that it isn’t always our immediate concerns that best serve our interests as in the simple example of imagining ourselves out of work or needing medical attention. As you say, this benefits everyone – point being that we also are ‘everyone’.